THIS BLOG IS MOVING!

OK, I've been having so much fun building this site, I've decided I need something with a little more power. So...I'm moving. You can find me blogging at www.typepad.com. I hope you'll join me at http://reclaimingthefword.typepad.com/reclaiming_the_f_word/ or CLICK ON THE HOT LINK BELOW. See you soon. - Kelly

R.I.P.

I've been down with the flu most of this week but even that doesn't explain why I haven't had anything to say about the late Rev. Jerry Falwell. Apparently, I'm not alone. This is from Frank Lockwood's blog - he's the religion editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette - and a new entry on my "must read" list:

Where's Barry Goldwater when we need him? It's hard to get people to speak ill of the dead, doggone it. Even when it's a controversial figure like the Rev. Jerry Falwell, people pull their punches when they're discussing the recently deceased. That probably reflects well on our sociey, on our humanity, on our basic decency. But it makes life hard for journalists. When Rev. Falwell passed away at age 73, I asked our two religion reporters to call the Moral Majority founder's Arkansas friends -- and some of his Arkansas detractors -- so we could write a good local reaction piece. I was looking for a piece that would be fair. And balanced. I figured it would be easy to get local Baptists to praise him. And it was. But finding folks who would criticize him wasn't easy. We called a highly-regarded local Jewish leader. He offered kind words. "Obviously his faith path was rather different from mine, but I think of how many people he turned to God," Rabbi Jacob Adler of Temple Shalom in Fayetteville told reporter Christie Storm. Reporter Laura Brown phoned a gay pastor who disagreed with the Lynchburg televangelist on a laundry list of items. But he only offered gentle criticism. “I always saw Jerry as my brother in Christ, although I think it would have been very hard on him to call me his brother,” said the Rev. Randy McCain, a gay man who pastors Open Door Community Church in Sherwood. Read the whole blog entry - and a lot of other great stuff - at http://www.biblebeltblogger.com/biblebelt/2007/05/wheres_barry_go.html#more

It'd be so easy to take shots at the guy. And for the first couple days after I heard Falwell died, I wrote those blog entries in my head. But I just couldn't do it. And I've decided that it's more than just a case of hearing mom in my head saying, "If you can't say anything nice..." There's something theological going on here, too. Here's what finally came to me: Somebody had to preach his funeral sermon. What if it'd been me?? In the parish, I had to preach lots of funeral sermons for people I knew weren't very nice people. And even more of them for people I never knew at all. But, good or bad, they all got more or less the same sermon from me. It went something like this: First, I'd have spent time talking with the deceased's family & friends (we'll say it's a "him") and I'd have gathered up as many good stories as I could. That's how I'd open the sermon. I wouldn't lie or make things up. If they didn't say he was a "loving father," I wouldn't say it. I wouldn't idealize the guy. But I'd give them back the good stuff they gave me. There was always something. Then, after doing right by the guy, I'd pause...and smile...and say something like, "But as many good things as there were about [name goes here], we all know he wasn't perfect." Some of them would sort of shrug their shoulders and nod at me, as if to say, "Well, you got that right." I'd keep smiling at them until they all smiled back. Even those most determined to make this guy a saint would have to agree. You see, I would have heard those stories, too. And, as gently as I could, I'd give them back the bad stuff. "He had a temper...he worked too much...he was a divider when he could have been such a uniter (oops, that's Jerry's sermon)...etc." There was always something. And, finally, I'd give them the good news. I'd read one of a thousand stories from the Bible about how God's grace and forgiveness and mercy and love comes to us all, and especially to those who least deserve it. I'd read, for example, the earliest Gospel account of Jesus' resurrection. From Mark 16, the women go to the tomb very early on the first day of the week only to find the stone has been rolled away. There is a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting there; and the women are afraid. But he tells them not to be, that Jesus has been raised from the dead. And then, remarkably, he says, "Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." Go tell his disciples and Peter...you know, the louts who deserted and betrayed him. The numbskulls who never quite got anything right, including this. How many times did Jesus warn them about what was coming and promise them that it would be ok?! And when the final exam came, they couldn't have been more unprepared. They couldn't have been more wrong. They couldn't have disappointed or wounded Jesus more. Go tell them that Jesus is alive! Go tell them that love lives and that all is forgiven and that he is waiting for them on the other end. Here's the truth, I'd say at the big conclusion of this little sermon, when the gates of heaven flew open this week...it was NOT because Jerry was such a good guy. It was because Jerry belongs to such a great God. Herein lies the problem...the reason I haven't had anything to say about the Rev. Falwell this week...and, I suspect, the reason Mr. Lockwood had a hard time finding anyone to say a cross word about him: It's hard to kick a guy, no matter how much of a creep you think he was, when you can picture him standing face to face with the One who loves us all. Damn.

Let's Meet At Peter's Cafe

Frans Johansson identifies two kinds of "ideas" in his little book "The Medici Effect" (Harvard Business School Press, 2006): Directional & Intersectional. "The major difference," he says, between a directional idea and an intersectional one is that we know where we are going with the former. The idea has a direction. Directional innovation improves a product in fairly predictable steps, along a well-defined dimension...The goal is to evolve an established idea by using refinements and adjustments. The rewards for doing so are reasonably predictable and attained relatively quickly" (pp. 18-19). The recently published ELW (Evangelical Lutheran Worship), heralded as a hymnal for a new generation, which will help congregations provide engaging worship focused on God's mission, is an example of a directional innovation. So is every effort to restructure and rehab our denominational offices. So is every plan to inspire young people in our high schools and on our college campuses to consider a "call to ministry" (i.e. putting in four years at seminary to become parish pastors). So are programs to "license" lay pastors in regions where there aren't enough ordained ministers to go around. "Intersectional innovations, on the other hand, change the world in leaps along new directions," Johansson says. "Intersectional innovations do not require as much expertise as directional innovation and can therefore be executed by the people you least suspect." He says interesectional innovations share these characteristics: They are surprising and fascinating; open up entirely new fields; provide a course of directional innovation for decades to come; and can affect the world in unprecedented ways. Many of us "in the church" - even those who have been at the forefront of pushing directional innovations - believe the time has come for intersectional innovation. In fact, I think many have advocated various directional ideas because they know something has to be done and haven't known what else to do. We feel in our bones that something in the culture has shifted and that "the church" as we have always known it is becoming and needs to become a new thing, or maybe a new-ancient thing. Or maybe it's the gospel itself we sense stretching, groaning against the confines of institution and tradition, calling us into newness of life and renewed mission. Whatever it is, we feel it. We know that just "refining" what we're already doing is insufficient...and maybe even irresponsible. Johansson may have something to offer here. He uses the term "intersectional" innovations because, he argues, these creative explosions only happen when you step into an intersection of fields, disciplines, and cultures so that existing concepts can be combined with new ideas. He describes how to overcome the natural barriers that exist between fields, how to combine concepts and find combinations, how to ignite and capture ideas, how to work together through failure and across differences. He concludes:

"Today there are more reasons than ever to seek out the Intersection. Disciplines and cultures are connecting faster, more often, and in more places than ever before...We can all create the Medici Effect because we can all get to the Intersection. The advantage goes to those with an open mind and the willingness to reach beyond their field of expertise. It goes to people who can break down barriers and stay motivated through failures. But we can all do that. Most of us have a desire to connect ideas and concepts from our disparate backgrounds. So why not actively seek out these connections? While writing this book I met a vast number of people who were working in one area they find interesting, but at the same time expressed marked interest in another. Someone working in the nonprofit world might want to use their ideas for for-profit practices; another might wish to link two different cultures. "If I could just find a way to connect these fields, bring the pieces together," they say, "then I could come up with something exciting, something new." Well, they are right. In our world it actually makes sense to combine sea urchins with lollipops, guitar riffs with harp solos, and music records with airlines. In our world it makes sense for spiders and goat milk to have something in common or for a person to launch a solar cell company one day and a cookie company the next. Like the creators of fifteenth-century Florence, this is how we break new ground; this is how we innovate. The world is, in some ways, like a giant Peter's Cafe, the place where sailors from every port on the planet stop for a beer, a conversation, and a chance to mix and combine ideas. The world is connected and there is a place where those connections are made - a place called the Intersection. All we have to do is find it...and dare to step in" (pp. 189-190).

The ironic thing, of course, is that those of us "in the church" LIVE in the intersection. Our congregations, our synod councils, our churchwide assemblies ARE like a giant Peter's Cafe. "The church" - even in its current form - has gathered "sailors" (and teachers, nurses, mechanics, lawyers, moms & dads, plumbers, doctors, Little League coaches, senators, high school & college students, retirees, taxi drivers, homeless people, musicians, CEO's, insurance brokers, social workers, computer technicians, scientists, kids, and people of all races & classes & ethnic groups) from every port on the planet. The question I'm asking myself is: With such a diverse group gathered together, why so few creative explosions? Why so much hand wringing about how we can't pay our bills, can't find enough pastors to fill our pulpits, don't have more people filling our pews, can't even dream of starting or trying anything new? We have everything we need right here to spark the kind of innovation in "doing church" and "being church" that can affect the world in unprecedented ways! So, why so few surprises, so few leaps in new directions? What are we doing (or not doing) when we get together that prevents the barriers between disciplines from falling? What are we doing (or not doing) that prevents people from combining their ideas and igniting new ones? Why aren't people, in so many places across the church, talking to each other and mixing it up and learning from each other and trying new things? Or to flip this question around, where IS true intersectional innovation taking place "in the church?" Where will you find the insights and ideas of a CEO, a retired school teacher, a stay at home mom, a seminary professor, a carpenter, and a bishop all given equal weight (for REAL); encouraged to try new things; given permission to fail early and often; respected and valued because they see things differently than everybody else? Or let's just start here: Where are the ideas of a Frans Johansson considered just as interesting and just as valuable as those of a Karl Barth? Wherever "in the church" THAT is happening, I believe we'll see something new emerge, something world-changing. And, dare I say it, something HOLY.

A Welcome Development?

Over the years, as the "emerging church" conversation became more and more popularized, it has tended to lean in the direction of style over substance. And I'm not sure it's out of the woods yet. But there are signs that something new is happening. For example, www.emergentvillage.com has teamed up with North Park University and Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary to sponsor a summer conference here in Chicago that might be worth checking out. Although, from my perspective, it still leans right (in fact, at least one member of the conversation - see link below - believes that, eventually, "emerging church" will fold into evangelicalism just like all of the other renewal movements of the past decades) this conference does feature a diverse line up of speakers, including women and people of color (although, interestingly, no Lutherans!)...in addition to the usual suspects. But here's the best part. This is from the web site describing the event:

You don't even have to be especially "emergent" to attend. "Missional" is a much broader term than "emerging", and we've invited speakers from a wide spectrum of belief and practice. All you need is a conviction that the church is at its best when it's giving itself away, and a desire to learn how to do that better in your own context.

"The church is at its best when it's giving itself away..." & our job is to "learn how to do that in your own context." Now, I would say that the church is ONLY the church when it's giving itself away...but I'm not going to be too picky. This is good stuff. The contextual piece (which was at the core of the early emerging conversation, even if it sometimes seemed to get lost along the way as emerging came to be identified with a particular way of worshipping) goes way over the heads of many mainliners, who still think everybody ought to be using the same hymnal. And we may be able to learn some things by listening in on this part of the conversation. (Note to conference planners: We'll learn the most, of course, if you're walking the walk and not just talking the talk. That means, among other things, practicing love and respect for those who come from congregations filled with little old ladies, pick-up truck owners, and migrant farm workers...and helping them understand more deeply what it means to "give themselves away" in their contexts.) But what's even more exciting to me is the emphasis on turning "the church" itself inside out. I'm increasingly convinced that "church" is what happens when we realize we can do more TOGETHER than we can on our own. It would be a good thing if that remained the driving force behind the emerging conversation...and within every faith community. I stuck a link to this conference over there on the right. What seems to be happening here is an interesting and possibly creative convergence of multiple "church renewal" streams. If it's for real, this would be a welcome development. Let me know what you think and if you plan to go. P.S. One of the profs at North Park had an interesting article about emerging church in Christianity Today a few months ago. It's worth a read. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/february/11.35.html

We Can!

I spent the weekend with 400+ Lutherans in Shelby Township, outside of Detroit. There are few places in the U.S. more economically stressed than southeastern Michigan and that creates all kinds of other problems. It's been argued, in fact, that Detroit's crisis is no smaller than the one post-Katrina New Orleans is in...and worse, because no one is paying any attention to it. The "synod assembly" (i.e. an annual denominational conference held in a particular geographic area) was held inside a church building that sits quite a bit north of 8 Mile (the infamous road that separates the largely African American and poverty stricken city of Detroit from the largely white and much more prosperous northern suburbs) and so I didn't actually see the problem first-hand. Instead, I saw it through the eyes of those gathered. Here's what I thought was interesting: Those who live above 8 Mile seemed much more depressed about what's going on below 8 Mile (and across the region, as a result of it) than those who actually live there. [Not that people outside the city shouldn't be concerned. They should be. Some of them are among the wealthiest people in the U.S. The bishop called on these folks to join him, during this 40th anniversary year of the 1967 riots, in renouncing racism, working toward reconciliation, and advocating economic justice for all. He seems serious about having people actually DO these things.] It's not that people above 8 Mile shouldn't be concerned. But many of those I talked to seemed more than just concerned. One said, eyes darting around at the relatively posh environment we were in, "To look around here, you wouldn't know anything was wrong. But it's just a facade. Underneath the surface, everybody is scared." And, I would add, really sad. It's like the problems have become so enormous, no one can see their way out of the mess. On the other hand, some of the people who actually live below 8 Mile told me stories about what it's like to be the church there. They see the mess, alright. (One African American woman called it "the uglys.") But that isn't all they see. One pastor (who I'm quite sure is African, based on her accent, in spite of the "Kiss Me, I'm Norwegian" T-shirt she was wearing!) said the neighborhood her congregation's building sits in is about 90% African American. The congregation itself is 60% white but very few of the white members live in the neighborhood. "Why are they there?" I asked. She seemed confused by the question. "Did they used to live in the neighborhood?" Still puzzled. "Did they belong to your congregation when they lived in the neighborhood and just drive back in from the suburbs because they can't stand to leave 'their' church?" She said, "No." Then, I asked again, "why are they there??" She smiled at me like I was stupid, "Because they see that they are needed there." Members of that congregation have taken in dozens and dozens of foster children over the 12 years she has been serving there. Some of those children end up staying in the church...or coming back to it...even as adults. It has become their family. "Many of the other churches in our community, if a young person gets in trouble, tell them 'You can't stay here. You have to leave.' But at our church, we say 'God loves you no matter what.'" The highlight of the weekend for me was the Detroit metro choir - all black - that sang during worship one night. Because I have faith, "I can!" they shouted/sang. And I believe them. From above 8 Mile, all you see is the mess. But from inside the uglies, it seems, you can also see Jesus. Which makes me think a couple of things: 1) We shouldn't be so afraid of messes, 2) If we can see Jesus there, we ought to be able to see Jesus everywhere, and 3) I need to spend a lot more time with people who believe they can. How about you?

Now She's Meddling

"The Atlantic" is not exactly Proletariat reading material. It's not, for example, sitting on the table in the grimy waiting room of your local car repair shop or in the magazine rack at your local beauty parlor. At least not the ones in my neighborhood. This is a magazine with articles about "Stalin on the Eastern Front" and "A Safari by air over Namibia's haunting sand" and "Why we should worry about the military's increased political assertiveness" and "Freeloading aesthetes and the women who kept them." There's a whole section on POETRY every month, ok? Enough said. But in this month's issue there is a fascinating article praising, against all odds, the virtues of Reality TV. Nothing is easier to make fun of. Mention it at your next social gathering and watch people turn their noses up, as though somebody in the room just had the audacity to fart in public. No one with any CLASS would admit that they're a fan - and I mean a real fan, not an embarrassed "I-can't-believe-I-watch-it-either-I-just-can't-help-myself" fan - but a real FAN who really CARES about whether or not LaKisha Jones will have a career after getting booted off Idol before her time (Blake survived?!? Puh-lease!!) and whether or not she'll be able to support her little girl, struggling single mom that she is. [If you missed it live(!), you can catch up at http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/sns-ap-tv-american-idol,1,7040377.story?coll=chi-entertainmentfront-hed] Reality TV is a sign of America's demise, right? The end times have to be near! And the 45 million people who voted for this week's Idol are barbarians who are responsible for the decline of our civilization. God help us all. But this author, convincingly!, argues that nothing on TV today takes more risks or is more vibrant. "Real Housewives," he says, charts the spiritual decay of life in gated communities where financial anxieties, fraying families, fear of aging (and, we can surmise, the absence of sidewalks) leaves people grasping for meaning and happiness. "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" captures the stories of real people who have fallen through the cracks in the Bush era, ravaged by health-care crises and layoffs. There is no predictability in Reality TV, no assurance that, in the end, lessons will be learned and order restored. What's more, says the author, "Narrative vibrancy is not the only thing that electrifies these shows. Reality TV presents some of the most vital political debate in America, particularly about class and race." The author, Michael Hirschorn, makes his living producing Reality TV shows and so you might expect him to have a biased opinion. But he's right that no one is even bothering to look for the good in these shows. They just roll their eyes. And I've got to admit, I was almost cheering when he finally made his point that the only reason anybody is picking on Reality TV is because they are snobs. Now maybe I was so taken by Hirschorn's willingness to name the ugly classist attitudes that run like poison through the crowds I travel in because, although my car radio is tuned to NPR, my vehicle of choice is a pick up truck. And I happen to have my most meaningful worship experiences when there is a good drummer driving the beat. And I feel uncomfortable when the preacher uses that "God" voice and insists on using words that have more than three syllables or sound like Greek to me (because they actually ARE Greek). And it makes me a little nuts when the worship leaders are prancing around in robes that were originally designed to keep priests warm in the unheated cathedrals of Northern Europe but now form the basis of a Sunday morning pageant, instead of just dressing and sounding and acting like normal people. And I really LIKE it when there's a projector and screen in the sanctuary, especially if it's being used to show movie clips or photos that illustrate the point of the sermon and communcate the good news and make the Biblical stories come alive. Maybe I was cheering for Hirschorn because my dad was a mill rat - a factory worker - and I was so incredibly offended to learn that one of my colleagues, when I was a member of a seminary faculty, told his students that lay worship assistants (whose main job is to read prayers the pastor writes out for them and hold the book so the pastor can make just the right hand motions at just the right time) can jokingly be referred to as "blue collar clerics." Another colleague taught his students that guitars have no place in worship because "all guitars make people think about is sex." I'm so not kidding. It is my experience and my observation that when it comes to doing worship - and being church - differently, a lot of the resistance comes down to a simple and horrible case of classism. And I just can't figure out why we're not dealing with this. We seem willing enough to at least talk about our racism, our sexism, and the various issues we have around sexual orientation. But we aren't talking about why we don't have the NASCAR crowd at worship on Sunday morning. And, since NASCAR is like the most watched sport in the country, this might explain why we have such a hard time reaching ANYBODY outside our walls including, by the way, our own kids (who are, of course, the biggest consumers of Reality TV). Frankly, I think most of the people INSIDE our walls would secretly like to see things be different (i.e. a little "Reality Worship," perhaps?!?) but they think they have to dress up & "worship UP" to be a part of our churches. In other words, while we long ago stopped telling non-Western people that they have to act Western in order to be Christian, we are still telling working class/blue collar/proletariat people that they have to act snooty (for example, listen to classical music for at least one hour a week and look like you're enjoying it...if you're in a traditional church, that is...listen to jazz and wear your best torn up jeans...if you're in an emerging one) to be members of our churches. I don't think anybody explains better than Martin Luther why it's important for worship to be deeply contextual (see the article below about his Preface to the German Mass)...but all that theology aside...I just think it sucks that we treat people so poorly. Sorry if I appear to be meddling where I don't belong. I'll just slink away and pop in my DVD of "Talladega Nights." That'll keep me laughing...and out of your hair for awhile.

Sidewalk Cracks

Ok, so, one minute I'm on the phone with a mission developer (i.e. a pastor who is starting a new faith community/congregation/ministry) who is looking for a coach and she's dreaming out loud about a church that a) addresses the lonliness and isolation that deadens people in suburbia and b) wakes them up to a life that means something by inviting them to work for justice and serve their neighbors and give themselves away for the sake of the world...and I'm totally psyched. I'm like, "Yeah! That's right! Preach it, sister!" And I'm thinking this is exactly the kind of "church" we need to be growing. And I think I even said, "The whole 'me and Jesus' church that invites you in so we can 'make you successful and make your life better' is so over. People today want their lives to matter." And the very next minute - I'm not kidding, as soon as I hung up the phone - I'm facing this headline in today's Chicago Tribune: Sidewalks crack suburb tranquillity By Courtney Flynn Tribune staff reporter Published May 9, 2007 Here's the story: While new housing developments in suburbia these days almost always include sidewalks, because we've discovered that sidewalks help connect people to each other and create community, the older developments didn't. And, to the surprise of town planners, efforts to bring sidewalks to these neighborhoods are causing a firestorm. Petitions, protests, angry town council meetings. We don't need them, people are saying. We walk our dogs in the street! Our kids get on the bus right in front of their houses. Everybody drives everywhere, anyway. It'll cost too much money. And, above all, you never know who those sidewalks will be inviting into your neighborhood.

[Hubert] Frank, 68, who organized a petition for Whitehall Drive, said sidewalks could also pose a safety risk by welcoming strangers into the neighborhood. "There's strange things happening in the world today, so why would we want to open up that possibility?" he said...The concern is, who knows what you'd be encouraging to come through."

"Who knows WHAT you'd be encouraging to come through...," Mr. Frank said. Not even WHO. This is sin, right? I mean SIN. In other words, this is people turning in on themselves, away from God...away from neighbor. And wherever there are people, there is sin. So, I'm not going to blame the sidewalk wars on anybody or any institution in particular. But I'm feeling a little cranky right at the moment. And here is what I'm thinking: Not only have all of our "me and Jesus" churches failed to address this sin in our suburban neighborhoods, we have contributed to the problem! We have allowed people to huddle up in the safety of our beautiful buildings and put them to sleep with assurances of personal salvation (given "FOR YOU!") and numbed them with our 3-point sermons on how to build happy families (as though there is some kind of reward - rather than a cross - for following God's 12 step program). We have given them the illusion that they are part of a real community because we smile at them when they come through the door on Sunday morning and, if they wear the nametag we ask them to, treat them like family...instead of like the strangers they really are...sending the message that strangers are BAD and difference is unacceptable. Aaargghhhh! This is SO not "over!!" Dear new friend of mine, working the mission field of American suburbia: You can't get that new church up and running soon enough. [Read the whole story at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0705090110may09,1,6246343.story?page=1&coll=chi-news-hed.]

The Conversion of the Church...Again

A couple weeks ago, I gave a copy of "The Church Inside Out" to a friend whose ideas I've always really admired and who is one of the best thinkers I know. He had never heard of Hoekendijk before but he eagerly read the book overnight. In the morning, my friend said with a smile: "I just kept thinking, as I read it, 'Hey, I thought those were my ideas!'" Have you ever noticed how, really, nothing is new under the sun? For example, Darrell Guder is an influential participant in the missional church conversation. I have been especially influenced by his 2000 book, "The Continuing Conversion of the Church" in which he argues that we have to repent of the ways in which we have tried to "reduce" the gospel to individual salvation and trivialized God in order to make God "manageable." This has led, naturally, to a reductionist understanding of the church and its mission. Instead of a movement that God has set loose in the world to bear witness to the inbreaking kingdom, the church has taken shape as an institution, "its focus...more and more on the administration of salvation. Its worship centered on the message of individual salvation; its sacraments established and regulated the status of salvation; its doctrines sought to define and delimit salvation. The questions it asked and anwered were these: Who is saved? Who is not? How can one be sure? How can salvation be lost? How can it be guaranteed?...More and more the clergy became the special caste of Christians who managed everyone else's individual salvation...[and] the overriding problem repeatedly has been a control-driven combination of concerns for public order, institutional security, and the protection of power" (chapter 6). Just for fun, I made a list of the things Guder recommends for the conversion (i.e. renewal or transformation) of the church in this new century: 1. Start With Scripture: Ask The Right Questions, Expect Something To Happen, Act Like Christians 2. Order The Ministry For Mission: Redefine The Office (i.e. the job of a pastor is to make sure people are equipped for mission & ministry in their daily lives), Expect More, Catch Up With The Spirit 3. Call People To Mission: Keep The “So That” Front And Center (i.e. the gift of salvation is a call to discipleship), Be Clear about what God has done and is calling us to do 4. Conduct Evangelizing Worship: Expect Jesus To Show Up, Be Open To Change, Worship Is A Public Witness (not a private club), Let The Good News Happen (i.e. we should experience it not just hear about it when we gather) 5. Disagree Christianly: Expect Conflict, Remember That Jesus Is Lord 6. Let Mission Shape The Community: Move Away From Membership, Reverse The Flow - not gathering but sending - not in but out Want to know more? Read Guder's book. Or, you could read a little tract written in 1675 by Philipp Jakob Spener (another voice that deserves a new hearing) called "Pia Desideria." Here's his list: 1. Start With Scripture: Make This The Most Important Thing (for laity, too!), Read It In Context, Read It Together in Small Groups 2. Reform The Leaders: Leadership Begins With The Heart, Reform The Process of Shaping Leaders (i.e. seminaries...because the system we have instills arrogance and know-it-allism in them), Tear Off The Masks 3. Exercise The Universal Priesthood: Unmask The Devil (i.e. clericalism), Call People To Action 4. Deliver Evangelizing Preaching: Make It Real, Preach To Save People 5. Disagree Christianly: Stand Firm, But Love 6. Put Faith Into Action: Practice Love, Practice Accountability Separated by over 300 years of history, these two theologians (prophets?) were saying essentially the same things about what is needed to pull Christianity out of Christendom in order to rescue the followers of Jesus from bondage to hierarcy/clericalism/traditionalism/etc. and set them free to participate in God's loving mission in the world. The point is: Nothing's new. The question is: Why would we expect it to be? Each generation, in its own way, tries to put God into a little box so that we can take control of the gospel. And in each generation God raises up voices that call us to repentance. God raises up people who pray/work/hope/cry out for our conversion. This has been happening since Paul called Peter on the carpet for putting institutional concerns, church polity, and personal security ahead of gospel freedom (Galatians 2:11ff). It is happening today. I hope that, if you are one of those people who has been praying and working and hoping and crying out for the conversion of the church for the sake of God's loving mission in this world, you will know that you are not alone. Not by a long shot.

Doors Are So Last Century

This is a shout out to the woman who grabbed me after my final presentation at the Open Hearts, Open Doors Conference in Duluth, Minnesota a week ago. (The mission of this annual, ecumenical conference is to assist congregations in becoming more welcoming to LGBT persons and their families. It's the first conference of this kind that I've spoken at and it was awesome to be invited.) With a furrowed brow, this lady - in her 60's or 70's - said this after spending a day and a half listening to me preach & teach:

"I don't know what I think about all this (i.e. your presentations)...It took so much work to open these doors to everyone...and now you're telling us, 'Why do you have doors at all?'...(long pause) and I think you're probably right. But I'm going to have to go home and spend some time thinking about this."

I really appreciated her honesty...and her willingness to wrestle with new ideas, including this one: Putting a sign on the front lawn of your church that says "Everybody is welcome here!" just doesn't matter...if no one "out there" can think of one good reason why they should care. In this postmodern, post-Christendom, post-ecclesiastical, post-bourgeois, post-personal, post-(you fill in the blank now) world people are no longer lining up to get through our doors. If they were, a welcome mat would be all we'd need. But they're not. They couldn't care less if "we" are ready to welcome "them" because they think we are irrelevant. And who can blame them. Mostly, we're answering questions they don't have. And it doesn't seem like we're even interested in the questions they do have. Let me say this another way: They don't think we're irrelevant because we're not welcoming them into our places of worship. They frankly don't care whether we welcome them or not because they don't believe we have anything they could possibly want or need. This is one reason I just can't get very excited about the "let's make our denomination more welcoming" project that consumes a lot of people inside every mainline church these days. It's not that I think we shouldn't be welcoming. That's a no brainer. It's just that the project to become "welcoming" is, in some really big ways, so...last century. In this new century, people "out there" don't care whether or not there is a congregation in their neighborhood that welcomes them. But I DO think they would be intrigued if they got to ACTUALLY MEET a living, breathing, believing, loving follower of Jesus on their home turf...in the house next door, in the cubicle next to them, working under the hood of their car, coaching their kid's little league team, running for city council, playing pool with them at the local pub. I think they would be really interested if they could see, in the way we ordinary Christians live and act and serve, what true freedom looks like. I think people would be moved to real curiosity if they ever found themselves in the presence of someone who shows them what it looks like to be really free...free from sin, death, and the devil (ala Martin Luther)...free from peer pressure, self-loathing, greed, bondage to material things, and all the other stuff that strangles the life out of people in this culture...free even from the suffocating politics and legalism and traditionalism of the institutional church...free to serve others, free to give themselves away to make a difference in the world, free to be the priests they were ordained to be at their baptism (no degree, no credentials necessary!), free to die to self for the sake of neighbor, free to love even their enemies! Hoekendijk again: "Rarely do our words arouse amazement, but people look up when they meet a free person who uses that freedom to serve" (1954). No one looks twice at our "welcome" signs, anymore. But heads snap when a free person walks by! In this new century, WE will be the only church that matters. Not the building. Not the pastor. Not the membership roster. Not the clergy roster. Not the rules. Not the sign on the front lawn...no matter what it says. WE are the church. I wonder what we would be fighting over, arguing about, and striving for if our heads were really wrapped around that idea.

Today's Headlines

Ten GOP presidential hopefuls went mano a mano last night, trying to win the right to represent the party of Ronald Reagan (and Honest Abe!) in the next election. Three of them - Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo - when prompted by a question from moderator Chris Matthews, 'fessed up to not believing in evolution. (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070503debate,1,41504.story?coll=chi-news-hed) Huh?!? In related news, a coalition of religious leaders is pulling out all the stops to prevent a new hate crime bill from becoming the law of the land. They made national headlines this morning because the bill is making its way to the president's desk. He has threatened to veto it. Apparently, this group of "evangelical, fundamentalist, and black religious leaders" is afraid "a pastor could be held liable for giving a sermon against homosexuality if a listener later attacked a gay individual." (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070503hate,1,1847702.story?coll=chi-news-hed) Aside from being embarrassed (yet again) to be a Christian, I find this argument utterly ridiculous. I mean, really. Since when have pastors EVER been held liable for what their listeners do - or don't do? Never, that's when. Think about it. How many sermons over the centuries do you think have been preached on texts like these:

"Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you." - Matthew 5:42 "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." - Matthew 5:44 "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged." - Matthew 7:1

OK, maybe not as many as Jesus might have liked. But at least a bizillion sermons have been preached on "Stewardship Sundays" on this one:

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth...but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven..." - Matthew 6:19ff

And after all that hot air...not much to show for it. Come to think of it, maybe a little liability wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Let Justice Roll - Amos 5:24

My son came home today glad for the "A" he got on the presentation he made in his English class this afternoon. But he was totally bummed out, anyway. His paper was on the role of propaganda in the genocide the world let happen in Bosnia a decade or so ago. As we were making dinner tonight, he said, "The world is messed up." And he's right, of course. On the other hand, today my stepdaughter participated in her high school's version of the "National Day of Silence," in support of gay & lesbian rights. She wore a T-shirt that said "My best friend is gay...and my moms are, too." On the back it said, "Got anything to say to that?" Tomorrow, my son is attending a rally in Springfield, in support of school funding reform in the state of Illinois. He's taking a bus down state along with 75 other kids from his school. And I was in the crowd of 150,00 marching for immigrant rights today. Some of my photos are posted here. There weren't any church bodies represented at the march, as far as I could see. But there were unions. And the Human Rights Campaign. And a lot of very ordinary people who are just sick and tired of not having a voice. I wore a T-shirt that said, "Let Justice Roll - Amos 5:24." Got anything to say to that??

The Heart of the Matter

Some people have said they're a little confused by this blog. And I think it's because they can't quite put a label on it. They can't figure out if it's "liberal" or "progressive" or "missional" or "emergent" or "confessional" or "ecumenical" or "evangelical." Nobody has confused it with being conservative quite yet, but even that might come in time. I think this is a good illustration of how completely unhelpful all of these labels have become. And I'm not even going to try to clear this up. Actually, I think what this blog is about is pretty simple. In fact, the heart of the matter is, I can draw it with two arrows. God comes "down" - through Jesus, above all, but in all kinds of other wonderful and fully incarnational ways - to save, love, bless, reconcile, and set us free (from sin, death, the devil, and anything else that would KILL us if it could!)...SO THAT we are free to love and serve our neighbors. Another way of saying it is: God's loving mission comes TO us through Jesus Christ...and it comes THROUGH us to the world. (Martin Luther said this way better than I ever could [and with more fancy words] in "The Freedom of a Christian" [1520].) This is the lens through which I see pretty much everything. I think my frustration with church-folk and other Christians is that it seems so simple! And we keep getting it so wrong. The biggest mistakes we make, of course, are: + wanting to keep the gift Jesus brings all to ourselves + making up idiotic rules about who is "qualified" to share the gift and/or who is "worthy" of the gift(did ya'll miss the part about how it's a GIFT?!? + just plain and simple acting like it's not a gift at all (from the looks on some of our faces and the sound of some of our worship services, an uninitiated person peeking in might think we had been given some kind of deadly disease!) Anyway, it's just not all that complicated. Sorry for the confusion.

Church At The Crossroads

Here's a voice that needs to be heard again. It belongs to a guy named J.C. Hoekendijk. Born in 1912, he was a contemporary of Lesslie Newbigin, who has had the stronger influence on the "missional" theologies and churches of recent decades (and, therefore, within the emergent church conversations). Both men were missionaries; J.C. was born to missionary parents in Indonesia and educated in the Netherlands, his parents' homeland. Both held positions within the World Council of Churches back in the 1960's. Hoekendijk was Secretary of Evangelism. He stirred things up with his stinging critique of evangelistic efforts born of "a nervous feeling of insecurity" and designed only to "restore Christendom" by saving "the remnants of a time now irrevocably past." J.C. was, in many ways, a populist who wrote in plain - and powerful - language. The theological establishment didn't like him much, although his students did, and when Hoekendijk divorced, the establishment had a "good" reason to more or less shut him down. Sidelined - for stylistic as much as for theological reasons - he ended his career pretty far removed from the world stage, quietly teaching at Union Seminary. He died in the early 1970's. Hoekendijk was a footnote in my missiological studies, a foil to Newbigin's more popular work, a voice with something interesting - but not really important - to say. A little tired of hearing the same old within missional and even emergent conversations, especially because I've been able to discern virtually no impact yet on the wider culture (meaning outside the institutional church) as a result of them which I think can be the only true measure) - indeed, more often than not I don't even hear any intention or hope of impacting the wider culture! - I used www.amazon.com to locate a used ($4!) copy of "The Church Inside Out," a compilation of J.C.'s writings over about a decade beginning in 1954, and read it cover to cover in one sitting. Then I bought up all the other copies I could find (about 10 of them)to pass out to friends and curious conversation partners I meet along the way. J.C., it turns out, might have some important - and not just interesting - things to say, after all. First(and, remember, this is 1954!), he sets the stage, describing the needed and inevitable demise of Christendom, which has thoroughly corrupted the Biblical concepts of church, the "heathen," and salvation. Notably, from safe within Christendom, we can see only two kinds of people "out there" beyond the church: 1) moral "pagans" - i.e. drunkards and the like, who have fallen away from a pious Christian life, who become the target of our "disgustingly moralistic" preaching, and to whom we offer "moral rearmament" and forgiveness for a wild past, rather than the fullness of God's Shalom, and 2) intellectual "pagans" - i.e. skeptics, who are suspicious of the doctrines of Christendom undoubtedly because they just don't know enough, to whom we are "condescendingly apologetic," and to whom we offer forgiveness for their "stupidity" in this case, rather than the fullness of God's salvation. From within Christendom, we can't even see, much less respond, to those who are in total revolt and completely reject our message...or those for whom the message is utterly irrelevant. We fail to see the world as the primary location of God's activity and the object of God's love. And we lose all connection to the radical gift God, in fact, has given and wants to give. Hoekendijk says that gift is Shalom - "at once peace, integrity community, harmony, and justice." This is the gift the Messiah brought with him and which he came to proclaim. Those who follow him are, likewise, called to proclaim (kerygma), live (koinonia), and demonstrate (diakonia) Shalom. And, as they do this, church happens. The church, in other words, is NOT the point. The church does not "send" us into mission; the church is a function of "the apostolate," The church is, in other words, an instrument that emerges to help us do the work we are called to do; it is "a means in God's hands to establish shalom in this world." And the WORLD is most definitely the point: "Our God is not a temple dweller. In the strict sense of the word he is not even a church god. He advances through time; ever again he lets the new conquer the old. He is not a God of the 'status quo,' but rather the Lord of the future, the King of the history of the world, and, as such, also Head of the church...We must maintain the right order in our thinking and speaking about the church. That order is God-World-Church, not God-Church-World" (J.C. Hoekendijk). There are "missional" movements afoot today to make the church "more the church," it is said, for the sake of the world. And there are other, evangelical and missional movements afoot that often get accused of trying to make the church more "like" the world, for the sake of converting the world. Hoekendijk - I think - would argue that both movements are misdirected because they are both still church-centered...and God is not. Mission is never centripetal (drawing people in to where salvation is), he argues. It is always centrifugal. Hoekendijk describes mission this way: "It leaves Jerusalem and the Jewish group and is on its way to the ends of the earth and the end of time. To join means here: To join the journey away from the center." Practically, what does this mean? A missional faith community won't stick a sign in its front yard saying "Come worship with us!" First of all, a missional faith community might not even HAVE a front yard...because all a building is in this paradigm is a tool and maybe, in some contexts, it wouldn't be a particularly useful tool. But if it DOES have a front yard, the message on the sign might be "Let's make a difference in the world together!" Or something like that. A missional congregation wouldn't promise to take care of me...it would call me to give myself away for the sake of my neighbor. It would invite me to live a life that MATTERS. It would call me to BE the church right where I have been planted...at work, at school, in my neighborhood. Isn't that what Jesus meant when he said, "Come follow me"?? That didn't mean, "Come huddle up in this building and pray a lot." Jesus spent his ministry out at the "crossroads" (cf. Matthew 4:12-17). If we're following him, that's where we'll be, too.

Rascally rabbits

I'm finally on the ground for a few days after several wild weeks of traveling & teaching. I've met hundreds of new people, heard dozens of stories, read a couple of books worth of articles, listened to some good lectures. So much to think about. The most hopeful, most interesting thing I've run across is a piece in this month's National Geographic (ok, I'm a nerd) about WALLS...the wall that is growing across the U.S.-Mexican border, specifically. Wall building is a pretty good way to describe what has happened and is happening across our culture these days...including within Christianity. The author argues that it is a little foolish to think you can ever build a wall that people won't find a way to break down or dig under or go around. In fact, building a wall may be useful in the short term. But mostly they just piss people off. The author used this story to illustrate it: "In 1859 a rancher named Thomas Austin released 24 rabbits into Australia because, he noted, 'the introduction of a few rabbits could do little harm and might provide a touch of home, in addition to a spot of hunting.' By that simple act, he launched one of the most extensive barriers ever erected by human beings: the rabbit fences of Australia, which eventually reached 2,023 miles. Within 35 years, the rabbits had overrun the continent, a place lacking sufficient and dedicated rabbit predators. For a century and a half, the Australian government has tried various solutions: imported fleas, poisons, trappers. Nothing has dented the new immigrants. The fences themselves failed almost instantly - rabbits expaned faster than the barriers could be built, careless people left the gates open, holes appeared, and, of course, the rabbits simply dug under them." Rascally rabbits.

The Real Problem?

"According to Religious Literacy, polls show that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the Bible holds the answers to 'all or most of life's basic questions,' but pollster George Gallup has dubbed us 'a nation of biblical illiterates.' Only half of U.S. adults know the title of even one Gospel. Most can't name the Bible's first book. The trend extends even to Evangelicals, only 44% of whose teens could identify a particular quote as coming from the Sermon on the Mount." - An excerpt from "The Case for Teaching the Bible," by David Van Biema, Time magazine, April 2, 2007. Is anybody else out there comforted by knowing that the Bible is used for bashing mainly because it's so heavy (especially in hardcover)...and not because anybody is really taking it seriously? To me, this is hopeful stuff. Maybe if people actually READ it, they'd GET it. In other words, the problem we face in the U.S. isn't too MUCH Christianity. It's too little.

Getting Worship Right

I guess I took a few people by surprise with the letter to the editor I contributed to this month's "Lutheran" magazine. I was responding to a lead article in February's issue about WORSHIP that claimed to represent a Lutheran pattern for the "work" of worship. (You can read it yourself at http://www.thelutheran.org/article/article_buy.cfm?article_id=6296.) In fact, this article represents a 20th century liturgical, largly Roman, movement that has inflitrated mainline Protestantism, unknowingly influenced the contemporary Christian praise & worship scene, and I believe threatens to undo the emerging church movement. I got my undies in a bunch when I read this article, written by a leading and highly repected worship teacher, for several reasons: 1) It acts like the worship debates are over - and that they have been won by the traditionalists, liturgists, and museum curators - nevermind the fact that increasing numbers of Christians are worshiping in all kinds of both new and ancient ways, 2) It tells the story of a little boy who got chased away from the Communion table - without irony, as if not to recognize that our "worship" services (and our congregations) chase people away all the time, and 3) It totally misses the mark in terms of what a confessional, Reformation theology might actually have to offer as we attempt to connect with each other and with the stranger in the midst of this postmodern mission field. Here's what I said: We have plenty of (really important!) things to argue about within the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in American) besides worship. But your February issue gives the impression the debate is over. It’s not. In fact, many of us are frustrated by the mid-20th century liturgical movement which has infiltrated Lutheranism, turning worship into “work of the people” rather than (as the Reformers understood it) something God uses to evangelize sinners (i.e., all of us!). We are not “baffled” by the liturgy or afflicted by the need to “create something different.” (Why is that a bad thing, anyway?!) Every congregation in North America sits in the middle of a mission field. If we have thrown away our hymnals, it may be because our first priority is sharing the good news of Jesus within a changing culture. What we desperately need, in order to do that well, is a Lutheran theology of worship that is both deeply confessional and radically missional. This issue offered neither. You see, I believe those 16th century reformers actually have something to teach us today. Read Martin Luther's Preface to The German Mass and Order of Divine Service, January 1526, and see for yourself. Here are a few of the key things I hear the old man saying: 1. I don't want to write a new order for worship because I'm afraid everyone will think they have to do it this way forever...and they most definitely don't. "No order has any intrinsic worth of its own..." (Luther) 2. The "Divine Service" (he does not use the word "worship") is designed within the context of Christian freedom. In other words, we are free from all legalistic orders and traditions in every part of our life together, and bound by one thing only: Service to our neighbor. 3. What does our neighbor need? The good news that Jesus came to bring, about the inbreaking reign of God! The POINT of all our forms and orders (including the "Divine Service") is this, Luther says: "the promotion of faith and the service of love" (Luther). In other words, the purpose of the Service is to teach and equip us - sinners all, and especially the simple, unbelievers, and the young - to be a part of God's mission in the world! One radical conclusion: The OBJECT of our "worship" service is not God! God is the SUBJECT of the service. WE, the people who are participating in the service, are the objects. The message, the singing, the readings, everything is done with US in mind -to teach us and equip us. 4. Finally, Luther recommends three different forms or orders for the Service. a. First, keep the Latin mass. Why? Because it will teach us a foreign language and "I would gladly raise up a generation able to be of use to Christ in foreign lands and to talk to their people..." (Luther). b. Second, offer a Service in German (the native language) for the sake of people "in general" who are "not yet believers or Christians" as a "public allurement to faith and Christianity" (Luther). Don't make them learn your language or customs! Use their language, customs, and means of communication so that they can understand what you are saying! c. Third, and most radically, Luther describes the "true type of Evangelical Order," the ideal Service, as a HOUSE CHURCH!: "Those, however, who are desirous of being Christians in earnest, and are ready to profess the Gospel with hand and mouth, should register their names and assemble by themselves in some house to pray, to read, to baptize and to receive the sacrament and practise other Christian works...Here there would not be need of much fine singing. Here we could have baptism and the sacrament in short and simple fashion: and direct everything towards the Word and prayer and love." The bottom line is this: In too many places - traditional, contemporary, and emergent - worship is about what WE do. Whether we're wearing albs or playing the drums or lighting candles and asking deep questions in a coffee shop, we make worship our common "work." But the Reformer teaches us that the Christian service is not OUR work; it is God's. The purpose of the Christian service is NOT to "worship" God, at all. (God doesn't need or want our worship & praise, people! Read Amos 5:21-24 again.) The service is to teach & show us how to be Christians and how to DO the Christian life, as participants in God's mission to love and bless and reconcile and set free and save the world. So, what questions, if they are taking direction from the Reformer, should worship service PLANNERS today be asking? Here are a couple: 1. Are our words and actions helping people learn (here's a clue: LECTURES DON'T DO THAT!)?! 2. Are we really equipping people to live and share their faith? Where is our evidence? 3. Are our words, images, media communicating in the language of those who do not yet believe and, especially, the young? 4. Who is this service FOR? How is it serving our neighbor? Do we even know who our neighbors are?!? How is it providing for a "public allurement to faith" in this context? 5. The biggest challenge is to the get the DIRECTION of worship right: God's Word comes DOWN to teach, equip, save, and set us free to love & serve our neighbor. If our songs are all about how Jesus is my boyfriend...or we're "working" hard at telling God how wonderful God is in our music and our prayers and our liturgies...or we're navel gazing more often than we're listening for a Word from the living God...we've got the direction mixed up. It worries me that the traditionalists think they've won, and so many in the contemporary and emergent camps want to show how they really ARE using liturgical forms (just in a new contemporary or ancient-new way), partly so we can all just make nice. Nice is overrated. I think what we need is a rousing conversation - and the Reformers need to be at the table.

An Open Letter To Barack Obama's Pastor

Dear Reverend – It would appear, given the current media frenzy, that one of your parishioners is about to be crowned King of the Democratic Party. And he appears ready to accept the crown. But before you hang that “White House or Bust” banner across your pulpit, it’s time for a little reality check. The Senator Obama who just kicked ass in the first quarter fund raising drive will never get elected president of the United States of America. Not in 2008. Not ever. And it’s quite possible that it’s all your fault. Frankly, if it weren’t for the fact that the opponent in his last (and first) congressional campaign was the reliably wacky Alan Keyes, imported from out of state by a Republican Party caught off guard by the lurid sexcapedes of their candidate Jack Ryan, Senator Obama would still be a little known Chicago pol serving time in the downstate Illinois capitol. I think even I could have taken Mr. Keyes out on election day – Illinoisians outside of Chicago are conservative but they’re not crazy – but presidential contender Obama has confessed that Mr. Keyes almost got the best of him. “Alan Keyes,” he reports in his now best-selling book The Audacity of Hope, “presented the essential vision of the religious right in this country, shorn of all compromise. Within its own terms, it was entirely coherent, and provided Mr. Keyes with the certainty and fluency of an Old Testament prophet. And while I found it simple enough to dispose of his constitutional and policy arguments, his readings of Scripture put me on the defensive. ‘Mr. Obama says he’s a Christian,’ Mr. Keyes would say, ‘and yet he supports a lifestyle that the Bible calls an abomination. Mr. Obama says he’s a Christian, but he supports the destruction of innocent life.’” Senator Obama passionately describes the dilemma that Democrats across the U.S. have found themselves in over the past several decades: “What could I say?” he wonders aloud. “That a literal reading of the Bible was folly? Unwilling to go there, I answered with the usual liberal response in such debates.” In other words, he dodged it. And that left his constituencies – and Senator Obama himself – “steeped in doubt” about whether or not he can call himself a “true Christian.” And everybody knows you can't get elected president of the United States today unless you are a "true Christian" (or a Mormon who acts like one). So all I can say to you, Mr. Reverend Sir, is: Shame on you. And shame on all of us who are "leaders" in the church today who have failed to teach people a responsible way to read and understand the Bible. We've allowed Sunday School literalism to become the foundation of the "true" Christian faith and we've made heros of those who check their brains at the church door. We've ducked and weaved when our parishioners have come at us with "hard" questions about creation and Noah and women preachers and all the rest instead of telling them the truth about what we learned in seminary and what we ourselves believe. We've tried to protect them because we've assumed their faith is too fragile to ask questions and deal with the uncertainties that are inherent in any ancient text. And we've tried to protect ourselves and our pay checks because we've assumed that, angry because we've upset their childhood faith, they'll fire us. Shame on all of us. If you're at all interested in seeing Senator Obama in the White House come January 2009, hop on the next plane to wherever his campaign has taken him and sit him down for a little one one one Bible Study. Teach him about all of the ways faithful Christians are reading the Bible these days - tell him about historical criticism - tell him about the narrative approach - tell him that the Word of God is bigger than the Bible! - tell him that JESUS is the Word of God and that, the last time we checked, Jesus is still alive and kicking - in other words, tell him that GOD IS STILL SPEAKING in and through the Bible but also in many and various other ways today. Tell him that "true" Christians worship a living Lord; they do not worship a book. Above all, tell him to quit second guessing himself and his faith. You don't have to read the Bible literally in order to be a "true Christian." In fact, a literal reading of Scripture IS folly...not to mention unfaithful, dangerous, and IMPOSSIBLE. Tell him that.

Check out this site

Precipice is an online magazine that understands itself to be about "the interaction between our present and emerging postmodern society, and the present and emerging Kingdom of God." Lately the religious right has been getting a spanking from these folks, which is both interesting and gratifying since its senior editor has emerged from Vineyard churches in Canada. In the current issue, members of the religious right are taken out to the woodshed for the way in which they insist irrationally in the primacy of Scripture - read objectively, of course. Says our writer: "One particular trend I’ve picked up while reading feedback to various articles, is the tendency for Christians to say things like “Don’t listen to theologians, read the Bible!”. I came across one such instance this past week. In the feedback section to an article discussing perspectives on Hell, one commentator wrote “Who cares what the Church fathers have to say!? What does the Bible have to say? That’s all that matters.” Talk about missing the point. Isn’t it obvious to people that the reason articles discussing various perspectives on Hell (and other contentious topics) exist, is because there IS NOT a clear, discernable biblical teaching on the issue? "If the Bible- as a stand alone authority- is all we need for discerning truth, then why is there so much disagreement amongst various groups of Christians who all look to the same Bible for answers? Surely, if nothing else, this situation suggests that Church tradition, cultural norms, and personal history, all play a role in determining how we read the Bible. "Of course, in a postmodern world, this is no revelation. Subjectivity is a given. What amazes me is that, so many Christians, still trapped in modern assumptions, go around really believing that it is the Bible alone that shapes their entire worldview. Subjectivity happens. Let's be honest about it." Check it out - http://www.precipicemagazine.com/christian_current_0107.html

O Canada

It was announced this week that Charles Taylor has been awarded the $1.5 million John Templeton Foundation award for cutting-edge research in science and spirituality and progress in the marriage of the two. Taylor, 75, is a professor of philosophy and law at Northwestern University. According to news reports, Taylor's work has addressed legal ethics, multiculturalism and secularization. But he is best known for critiquing the spiritual poverty of modern academia. "We don't understand what's going on unless we understand that as human beings we are spiritual beings," he has said. Aside from the fact that Taylor likes to take aim at one of my favorite targets - liberal academics, including those in our seminaries, who act like we can all just think our way out of the jams we're in (if, in fact, they ever even admit that we're in a jam) - and the fact that he teaches here in my home town, this story caught my eye this morning because as a native of Montreal, Taylor is the first Canadian ever to win this prize. We actually just got back from Canada, where we spent a few days working hard with some good friends in the church up there who are trying to figure out how to breathe new life into their shrinking membership base before it's too late. I love working in Canada because, for the most part, the church up there has given up pretending there isn't a problem. Here in the U.S. even our smallest mainline denominations (as long as we can stomach the steady stream of staff cuts) have enough resources to fool ourselves into thinking there is nothing really serious to worry about. But, in Canada, mainline Christians talk openly about the likelihood of seeing their denominations turn out the lights for good within this generation. For many of them, this reality has become a spur to action. What the hell are we waiting for?

It's All My Fault

Just in case you thought the far right had some sort of emotional break in the actual aftermath of 9/11, when Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell told their 700 club TV audience on 9/13/2001 that the terrorist attacks were the fault of feminists, homosexuals, environmentalists, and the ACLU (no, I'm so not kidding), here we have Dinesh D'Souza - the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution - some 5 1/2 years later - surely enough time to regain lucidity - publishing a book called: "The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11." The title says it all. A follow up article appeared in the national press, courtesy of USA TODAY, on January 23, 2007. Maybe you saw it. D'Souza wrote there that the real "issue" Radical Islam has with America isn't capitalism, science, or even religion. The issue is "that we are a decadent, immoral society that is projecting its culture and values throughout the world and threatening their faith." How should the Bush administration respond, D'Souza asks. The answer, our author says, is that "The best way for America to refute the radical Muslim allegaton that we are an immoral, pagan society is for the Bush administration to show the rest of the world the face of traditional America...[Bush] should not hesitate to speak out against American cultural exports that are shameless and corrupting. And American should promote traditional family values, not feminisim and homosexual rights, in international forums like the United Nations." D'Souza concludes his article by saying: "If traditional Muslims realized that there are millions of Americans who go to church, take care of their families and live by traditional values, they would be less likely to view us or our leaders as the Great Satan, and fewer of them will be tempted to join the camp of the Islamic radicals. Improving our moral reputation is not just a way to look better, it may also be the best long-term strategy to make our country safer." http://www.amazon.com/Enemy-At-Home-Cultural-Responsibility/dp/0385510128 I think this author - this book - and this paranoid perspective - is dangerous. That's why, counter-intuitively, I want you to go buy this book. Buy it and give it to one your friends who has his head in the sand. You know the one: He thinks it doesn't really matter who gets elected president. Or he thinks that our "national security" is more important than safeguarding human rights, not just here but everywhere. Or he thinks it's "just a matter of time" before we have equal rights for all Americans. Maybe you need to buy more than one copy. I'm thinking about buying one for all of my friends who think the biggest issue facing gay and lesbian people is that they can't be ordained. We have an enemy living right here in our midst. Just like the man says. This "enemy" is pointing at me (and maybe at you) and blaming us for the way the rest of the world looks at us - and hates us. And here I thought it was because of the way we keep invading their countries and killing their people and sucking up their natural resources and eating way more than our share of the world's food. Silly me.